This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Chip Duncan, protagonist Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, photojournalist/producer Patrick Muiruri and photojournalist/producer Salim Amin. Chaired by John Owen, Professor of International Journalism at City University London and Chairman of the Frontline Club. He was formerly head of CBC Television News and, more recently, Executive Producer for Al Jazeera programmes from 2010-11.

The Sound Man tells the story of Abdul Rahman Ramadhan, a 62-year-old professional soundman who has lived in Nairobi’s Kibera slum since he was born. For the past 35 years, Abdul has worked side-by-side with the best photojournalists from Kenya, recording sound for news reports featuring crisis, war, famine and genocide.

The Sound Man uses extraordinary archival footage from Nairobi-based production company Camerapix to tell Abdul‘s gripping story – a story that explores the risks to frontline journalists and includes coverage of the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, the civil war in Sudan, the revolution in Ethiopia and post-election tribal conflicts in Kenya.

Abdul was also an eyewitness to the genocide in Rwanda, having spent spent weeks working from the so-called “Hotel Rwanda”, and his firsthand recollection of the genocide provides extraordinary insight into the human condition.

The Sound Man was written, produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker and photojournalist Chip Duncan.

Director/Producer: Chip Duncan
Year: 2015
Runtime: 27′
www.duncanentertainment.com/soundman.php

On Friday 3 July 2015, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of documentary Shades of True, followed by a discussion with director Alexandre Westphal via Skype. Westphal’s documentary looks at the aftermath of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, when a million people were murdered over a period of three months.

Longstanding divisive struggles between the Tutsis and Hutus resulted in mass killings, during which many of the Hutu majority took up arms and killed members of the Tutsi tribe. Hutu women as well as men killed their Tutsi neighbours and took commanding roles within armed groups. Shades of True looks at the lives of eight imprisoned female Hutus as they recall their involvement in genocide.

In particular, the film reveals a torn relationship between a mother and son, Immaculae and Jerome, after the mother killed her son’s Tutsi father and extended family during the genocide. “What is dirty will never again regain its purity,” says her son, who is taunted mercilessly at school by students who cannot understand his particular sense of mourning.

In a discussion following the screening, director Alexandre Westphal explained that he originally travelled to Rwanda in order to investigate the stories behind those who had been imprisoned for their role in the genocide.

“When we first started to think about the movie, we thought about where we could find a place for the people who were gone because of the genocide, who died because of it, and for the survivors also. But we didn’t want to impose two memories of the perpetrators and of the victims, and to confront two different types of speech, so we started to think of more simple ways to represent genocide,” said Westphal.

The film was screened in Rwanda, where it received mixed reactions. Westphal told an audience at the Frontline Club that although the film’s subjects found it difficult to watch, it revealed to them other elements of the story. Westphal also commented on the therapeutic value of the film for young Jerome, whose Tutsi father had been murdered in 1994.

An audience member commented on the film’s foregrounding of the Rwandan landscape, as Shades of True includes shots of beautiful scenery alongside horrific recollections of mass killings. Westphal responded:

“We started to think of more simple ways to represent the genocide, and to let the spectators imagine what could have happened in these spaces. [These images were] mostly a way to represent the places where the genocide happened, and to show what is still there today…. because, except for the memories of Rwandans, there is nothing in the landscape that could indicate that genocide was there.”

Opening the debate that took place at the Frontline Club on 9th April to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Mukesh Kapila, former humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, claimed that the legacy of this experience is to to make us all Rwandans, “because a crime against humanity in one place becomes a crime against all humanity everywhere.”

L-R Mukesh Kapila, David Belton, Sam Kiley, Williams Nkurunziza and Eric Murangwa Eugene

His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza, High Commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, began by assessing the strides made over the last 20 years.

“By every measure of assessment, if you look at Rwanda – the basket case of 1994 has become the model state of 2014.”

The success and effectiveness of this transformation can be attributed, according to Nkurunziza, to three choices made by President Kagame and the government directly after the genocide. To “chose to be together” by resisting the potential for victims and perpetrators, forced to live together in the aftermath of genocide, to engage in a cycle of retribution. “To chose to be accountable”, by ensuring a “new inclusive political dispensation… where a winner cannot take all [and] where even the losers must participate in the process of governance to ensure all Rwandans must be inheritors of the mess that was left in 1994”. Finally, Nkurunziza cited the importance of thinking beyond the traditional paradigm, specifically in the engagement of women as equal participants in the process of governance.

Most importantly it is this path of restorative justice over punitive justice which has enabled the country to move towards reconciliation at such pace.

David Belton, who experienced the genocide first hand whilst reporting for the BBC, did not question this assessment of the government’s, but rather “ where one’s identity, where one’s past, one’s memories exist in this new paradigm.” For Belton, it becomes a question of how one deals with the past and forge a new identity for the future within this “post-trauma society”.

For Eric Murangwa Eugene, who survived the genocide, it is the three decades leading up to 1994, in which the political establishment enforced the idea of difference and the notion of ‘the enemy within’, which means that the process of reconciliation becomes a much longer process.

Kapila elaborated on this by stating that the success of the reconciliation process was based on the fact that a determination “not to hide the truth” was not viewed just in a psychological sense, but through a political and institutional approach,

“Reconciliation succeeded because it wasn’t just a sentimental thing, there was a very strong sense of justice and truth-telling that went along with it. There is a question of whether reconciliation can be forced? One has to say the right thing before it becomes internalised and then doing the right thing follows.”

When questioned over why it is the West that should be asked to carry the burden of moral responsibility for international inventions, Kapila remarked that the lessons learned show that “nobody saved Rwanda… outside people cannot save these things. The real resistance comes from within. The role of the international community is to make sure we don’t stand in the way. And when we do intervene we have to make sure there is proper accountability”. He cited specifically Kofi Annan’s sanitisation of reports transmitted to the UN security council.

https://twitter.com/HilaryStauffer/status/453963539938832384

To this Belton interjected, instead arguing that the experience of Rwanda proves that the international community could and should have intervened very quickly and effectively with as little as 5000 UN peacekeeping troops.

“It is a question of ‘just cause’, as defined by Tony Blair in 1999, as to whether you had the moral right, whether you could do it militarily, whether you are in for the long term…”

“The critical thing is that you have to have transparency, which enables everyone to have a better understanding about who is shaping events. I think we are at a place now, where you see the connivance by the internal community for what it is… as cowardice and failure.”

Returning to a question of accountability and responsibility, Ambassador Nkurunziza stated that “fixing Rwanda’s problems should be left to Rwandans… however, that does not absolve the international community.”

“[The genocide] didn’t happen because people didn’t know about it… it happened because people didn’t care.” He went on to emphasise the need for dialogue between the West and Rwanda.

For Belton, however, while this new dialogue is essential it should not be at the expense of denying the past, or the historical identities that have shaped Rwanda.

“You need space for people to develop their own narratives, to develop the confidence to be able to say I am Rwandan and I am also a Tutsi. Can they develop their own stories, their own histories which are not contaminated – which can lead to the shared value system that enables them to make choices about who they want to be rather than being told what to be?”

Watch or listen to the event here:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-rwandan-genocide-lessons

The Frontline Club hosted an evening of reflections marking the publication of Granta 125: After the War on 17 October. Two correspondents shared their personal views on developments on the ground, after the battles are fought and the camera teams have moved on to cover other wars.

From left to right: Roma Tearne, Frances Harrison and Lindsey Hilsum

Roma Tearne, Sri Lankan artist, filmmaker and novelist, spoke to Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Channel 4 News who covered the Rwandan genocide and Frances Harrison, former BBC Correspondent in Sri Lanka.

Watch it back and listen to the podcast:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/granta-125-after-the-war-with

Leah Chishugi describes herself as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and it is what she calls the ‘survivor’s guilt’ that compelled her to return to her native Congo where she set up the charity Everything is a Benefit to help those affected by the region’s conflict.

She will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with special correspondent and presenter for BBC News, Razia Iqbal, to tell her story and the stories of the women and children in the eastern part of Congo that she now dedicates herself to helping.

Chishugi grew up in eastern Congo but moved to Kigali the Rwandan capital at the age of sixteen to work as a model, she married and had a son. But just three years later she found herself caught up in the massacre that claimed over 800,000 lives. She escaped only after being left for dead under a pile of corpses.